[
THE INVESTOR] Samsung Group, the largest family-run conglomerate in South Korea, was on high alert Tuesday over the possible issuance of an arrest warrant for its de facto chief.
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong headed to the group’s headquarters in Seocho, southern Seoul, at around 1 a.m. on Feb. 14, after being grilled for 15 hours by the Park Young-soo special counsel team for the second time over bribery allegations.
According to sources, Lee held an emergency meeting with the top brass of the conglomerate to consider preparations as a precaution against the possibility of an arrest warrant being issued.
“About 200 employees and executives of the Future Strategy Office were on standby,” said a group official. “The vice chairman convened a meeting with heads of the seven teams under the office.”
“The vice chairman thinks he has explained sufficiently about the allegations,” the official added.
Lee is suspected of bribing President Park Geun-hye’s longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil to win political support for a controversial merger between two Samsung affiliates in 2015. The
Samsung C&T-
Cheil Industries deal was made possible by the support of the state-run National Pension Service, which was the largest shareholder of Samsung C&T.
However, Lee faced new accusations in the second round of questioning, including one involving the Fair Trade Commission. The FTC ordered Samsung SDI, a battery making unit of Samsung, to reduce its equity holdings in Samsung Electronics, three months after the merger in 2015.
Samsung SDI disposed of 5 million Samsung Electronics shares to comply with the country’s regulation on cross-shareholding among affiliates in October. The counsel team suspects that the presidential office exerted influence to reduce the size of required stock disposal by half from an original 10 million shares.
The special counsel also suspects that the financial authorities, including the Financial Services Commission, supported
Samsung BioLogics’ listing on the Kospi last November.
This time, Samsung is concerned about the possibility of an arrest warrant not only for the group heir, but also for other executives who were questioned.
On Feb. 14, two senior executives of Samsung -- Samsung Electronics President Park Sang-jin and Senior Executive Hwang Sung-soo -- were questioned over whether the sponsorship for Choi’s horseback rider daughter was under Lee’s instructions.
In total, five Samsung Group executives were called in as suspects, including its Future Strategy Office’s Choi Ji-sung and Chang Choong-ki who were summoned earlier.
Since the previous arrest warrant for Lee was rejected by a Seoul court on Jan. 19, citing lack of evidence, the special probe team has been conducting a broader investigation into the connections between Samsung and President Park’s confidante Choi.
The special counsel team said Feb. 14 afternoon in a press briefing that reissuance of the arrest warrant for Lee, and possibly other Samsung executives, will be decided later considering the progress of the overall investigation into the presidential scandal.
By Song Su-hyun/The Korea Herald (
song@heraldcorp.com)